RIVERSIDE tennis player Max Byrne has returned home from the ITF super senior world championships in Turkey with gold and bronze medals.<\/p>\n
The 82-year-old veteran was captain of the Australian over 80s team and the only Tasmanian representative in the 36-member national team that travelled to the Ali Bey resort near Manavgat, for the 60-80 age group tournament.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018It was a bit of a circus because I tore a tendon in my left shoulder before I went, which gave me trouble serving,\u2019\u2019 Byrne said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018I thought as team captain I would take it easy but our No.1 player tore his calf muscle in the practice so I had to play No.1 and I had to play every match.\u2019\u2019<\/p>\n
Overall Byrne played 14 matches during the tournament, winning 11 of them.<\/p>\n
Australia finished third in the teams\u2019 event behind the undefeated US and second-placed Germany.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018There were 13 teams in it and we came third so we got the bronze,\u2019\u2019 Byrne said.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018In the individual championships I lost in the quarter-finals of the singles and doubles but won the mixed with a Canadian partner Muffie Grieves \u2013 so I got a gold medal for that.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018As a result I finished 11th in the world in ITF rankings for my age group for singles, third for men\u2019s doubles and first in the world for mixed doubles.<\/p>\n
Byrne won the gold medal in the 2007 championships in men\u2019s doubles and won gold in the mixed doubles last year.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018The championships were held over about three weeks and I reckon there were about 1000 people there altogether.<\/p>\n
\u2018\u2018The resort had 55 tennis courts and was in a great spot on the Mediterranean.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
RIVERSIDE tennis player Max Byrne has returned home from the ITF super senior world championships in Turkey with gold and bronze medals. The 82-year-old veteran was captain of the Australian over 80s team and the only Tasmanian representative in the 36-member national team that travelled to the Ali Bey resort near Manavgat, for the 60-80 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5905,"featured_media":5618,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5617","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5617","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5905"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5617"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5617\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tennis.com.au\/tas\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}